Smith v. Delo

• Decision Date: 19 July 1993
• Docket Number: No. 92-2991,92-2991
• Citation: 995 F.2d 827
• Parties: Otis L. SMITH, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Paul DELO; Debbie Reed, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 827

995 F.2d 827

Otis L. SMITH, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Paul DELO; Debbie Reed, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 92-2991.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

Submitted March 18, 1993.

Decided June 9, 1993.

Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing

En Banc Denied July 19, 1993.

Kenneth Burke, St. Louis, MO, argued, for appellant.

Tamara Medler, St. Louis, MO, argued, for appellee.

Before MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge, FLOYD R. GIBSON, Senior Circuit Judge, and KYLE, ^* District Judge.

FLOYD R. GIBSON, Senior Circuit Judge.

Smith appeals the district court's ¹ grant of summary judgment against him in his challenge to certain prison mail regulations. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Smith has been an inmate in the Missouri Correctional System since 1983, and is currently incarcerated at the Potosi Correctional Center. Prior to 1989, all outgoing inmate mail addressed to members of the media or of the clergy was classified as privileged. This classification meant that the mail could be sent to the prison mailroom sealed. After February 1989, these categories of mail were reclassified as "not privileged," which meant that it had to be sent to the prison mailroom unsealed so it could be inspected for contraband and proper addressing. ² Prison officials may read non-privileged mail to determine whether it contains threats (to either prison security or individuals) or evidence of illegal activity. Barring inclusion of these impermissible matters, the mail is not censored.

Smith filed suit, alleging the reclassification of clergy and media mail as nonprivileged violated his First Amendment rights. The defendants (hereinafter "the prison officials") moved for summary judgment. The magistrate judge initially denied the motion insofar as it applied to Smith's request for declaratory and injunctive relief, but granted the motion insofar as it applied to Smith's request for monetary damages based on the prison officials' qualified immunity. Upon reconsideration, the magistrate judge concluded the change in classification did not violate the First Amendment and granted the prison officials' motion for summary judgment. The district court adopted the magistrate judge's report and recommendation, and Smith appeals.

II. DISCUSSION

A. The Standard

"When analyzing actions that impinge upon prisoners' constitutional rights, we must steer between two well-established principles: on the one hand, prisoners do not lose all their constitutional rights while behind bars; on the other hand, federal courts must defer to the judgment of those officials responsible for the inordinately difficult task of operating a prison." Quinn v. Nix, 983 F.2d 115, 118 (8th Cir.1993). Typically, the decisions of prison officials are upheld so long as they are "reasonably related to legitimate penological interests." Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 2261, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987). This examination focuses upon whether the regulation is rationally related to a legitimate and neutral objective, Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 414, 109 S.Ct. 1874, 1882, 104 L.Ed.2d 459 (1989), whether alternative means for exercising the right exist, id. at 417, 109 S.Ct. at 1883, the impact accommodation of the right will have on others in the prison, id. at 418, 109 S.Ct. at 1884, and whether obvious, less-restrictive easy alternatives exist to the response taken by the officials. Id.

In arguing for a more exacting standard of review, Smith relies on Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974). Smith insists that Martinez, which he interprets as establishing a "less restrictive means" test, applies to this case because both Martinez and this case (unlike Turner and Abbott) involved outgoing prisoner mail. We do not agree with Smith's interpretation of Martinez, particularly in light of the Supreme Court's discussion of that case in Abbott.

In Martinez, the Supreme Court struck down California prison regulations that attempted to control the content of mail sent to recipients outside the prison. Id. at 399-400, 94 S.Ct. at 1805. ³ In discussing Martinez, the Abbott Court specifically stated that it did "not believe that Martinez should, or need, be read as subjecting the decisions of prison officials to a strict 'least restrictive means' test. As noted, Martinez required no more than that a challenged regulation be 'generally necessary' to a legitimate governmental interest. 416 U.S., at 414 ." Abbott, 490 U.S. at 411, 109 S.Ct. at 1880. The Court went on to explain that "a careful reading of Martinez suggests that our rejection of the regulation at issue resulted not from a least restrictive means requirement, but from our recognition that the regulated activity centrally at issue in that case--outgoing personal correspondence from prisoners--did not, by its very nature, pose a serious threat to prison order and security." Id. (footnote omitted). Finally, the Abbott Court explained that the regulations in Martinez "were broader than 'generally necessary' to protect the interests at stake." Id. at 412, 109 S.Ct. at 1881.

It is true that Abbott also said that "the logic of [the] analyses in Martinez ... requires that Martinez be limited to regulations concerning outgoing correspondence." Id. at 413, 109 S.Ct. at 1881. However, the context of this statement indicates it refers to Martinez ' conclusion that "[t]he implications of outgoing correspondence for prison security are of a categorically lesser magnitude than the implications of incoming materials." Id. The Court was making clear that it was not going to further carve out areas of relatively high or low risks to security, as it rejected all proposed distinctions between incoming mail from inmates and incoming mail from non-inmates. Id. In other words, Martinez is limited to outgoing correspondence when deciding the degree of security risk involved; however, when read in conjunction with the Court's discussion in Abbott cited in the above paragraph, it appears that Martinez should not be understood as establishing a special test that applies only when evaluating the constitutionality of regulations governing outgoing mail. Martinez should be understood as striking down the regulation because it was not rationally related to a legitimate and neutral penological objective and because the regulation went further than necessary to serve valid governmental interests. This is not different from the analysis mandated by Turner. Consequently, we analyze the reclassification at issue in this case under the Turner standard.

B. Application of Turner

We start, as required by Abbott, by examining whether the regulation is rationally related to a legitimate and neutral objective. Through their affidavits and depositions, the prison officials explained that the prison had an interest in screening mail for escape plans, contraband, threats, or evidence of illegal activity. Although there is less of a security risk with outgoing mail precisely because the mail is going out of the prison, Abbott, 490 U.S. at 413, 109 S.Ct. at 1881, there is also no doubt that prison officials are justified in discovering and refusing to process mail that contains these matters. Id. at 412, 109 S.Ct. at 1880; Martinez, 416 U.S. at 412-13, 94 S.Ct. at 1881. This being the case, it is apparent that the regulation at issue is reasonably related to this legitimate purpose; only by discovering the contents of the mail can prison officials insure that mail containing improper matters is not sent outside the prison. ⁴

Determining whether alternative means for exercising the right asserted by the inmates exist is complicated by the difficulties in ascertaining the precise right that is asserted. If the right at issue is the right to communicate with the media and outside religious figures and institutions, there is no doubt that alternative means exist. The record reflects that inmates may use the phone to communicate with people outside the prison, and there is also an indication that, under certain circumstances, in-person meetings may be (and have been) arranged. Moreover, the challenged regulation does not bar communication via the mail; Smith is perfectly free to write to the media or the clergy about a wide range of subjects (including matters critical of the prison) without being censored. Recognizing this, Smith seems to argue there is no alternative means for exercising his right to unmonitored communication. We do not believe he has such a right. Certainly, constant monitoring of communications would be a problem of great constitutional dimension if we dealt with communications between non-inmates and the media or the clergy. However, there is no doubt, in light of both Martinez and Abbott, that prison officials have a legitimate interest in preventing inmates from communicating certain types of information.

Thirdly, we examine the impact on non-prisoners if the regulation were struck down. If this regulation, which represents the only method of identifying impermissible mail, were not allowed, mail containing threats, escape plans, etc. would be processed and delivered without the knowledge of prison officials. This has a tremendous impact on prison officials, who have a strong interest in preventing, deterring, and discovering escape plans. It also would have a strong impact on anyone receiving a threat from an inmate.

Smith finds much meaning in the fact that the prison officials could not identify an instance in which impermissible matters were included in media and clergy mail when those types of mail were treated as privileged. We do not find this factual allegation to be terribly important. First, neither of the defendants had anything to do with changing the classification, which change has effect over the entire Missouri prison system. The fact that no problems were encountered at Potosi does not mean Potosi should be exempt from an otherwise valid regulation....